


Pulled From the Warren

by WhisperingOrchard



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Noiz-centric, no really--like piles upon piles of angst, tw: brief animal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 03:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1330765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperingOrchard/pseuds/WhisperingOrchard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, Aoba made a right from his immeasurable wrongs.</p><p>NoiAo, but Noiz-centric. A collection of interrelated drabbles following Noiz from age 5 to age 22.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pulled From the Warren

**Author's Note:**

> I should be studying for Calculus. Instead I wrote about Noiz's years leading up to his time with Aoba. This is unbeta'd. I really don't know what else to say, I'm not super proud of this one.  
> Note that there IS brief, unintentional animal abuse in this one, so if that bothers/triggers you, please skip the second and possibly the third drabbles.

When he was five years old, Noiz saw a rabbit for the first time.

Initially, he was rather unimpressed by the little tuft-worth of tawny fur trembling timidly beneath the hedge in front of his house. Those wide inky eyes stared unblinking back at him, and for the swiftest of seconds he swore that a whisper of a plea poured from the seams of its eyelids—an unspoken begging to be spared its life.  It was a strange creature, Noiz thought, with curvaceous ears erect and flicking this way and that with every insect’s breath, with every twitch of his little fingers in its direction…

Beside him, Noiz could feel his brother’s presence—the three-year-old impatiently grasped at his sibling’s trouser leg and pointed insistently in the bunny’s direction, babbling on about some nonsense or another—Noiz had long ago learned the art of drowning out his brother’s prattling with the echoing utterances of his own thoughts. He refocused his irises on the fragile ball of fleecy fur burrowing under the jutting briars of the bush; the rabbit reared its head once, a breakneck motion meant for defense, before it retired into the makeshift den.

Noiz lurched forward and snaked his hand beneath the bush in a vain effort to grab the rabbit by the bottom—his efforts earned him little more than a hand full of thorn pricks.

~w~w~w~

It was an accident.

This is his mantra—silent, unspoken, audible only to the fabricated friends sewn to the walls of his subconscious; only they may bear witness to his innocence, though their voices too were powerless in the face of authority. It was an accident—it was an _accident_ —despite the truth in these words he could not will the image from his mind, nor could he cleanse the blood caked onto his calloused hands.

It was an accident.

Yet that did not abate his guilt.

A shrill scream, raw and racking, resounded from the younger boy standing beside him—Mathias stumbled backwards and shoved Noiz’s shoulder in a moment of panic before bolting off in the direction of the house; he did not look back and did not cease shrieking all the way to the door.

The words in Noiz’s throat clumped together and clotted his larynx, lodged beneath his skin; a sourness formed in their place as each syllable expired on his tongue, but he did not feel a thing. A thick blurring veiled his vision with salt and sorrow, and before his mind could fully register the ruby liquid pooling onto his fingers, the form in his grasp was dropped to the grass with a sickening _thump_.

It _was_ an accident...

Wasn’t it?

It wasn’t his fault—

She wouldn’t quit squirming—

She turned her head too far—

He held her too tightly.

He held her by the ears.

He heard her curdling squeal.

She snapped her own neck.

His gaze glided downward to fall upon his sticky hands—trembling, grimy hands, wretchedly hellish hands, hands with which he gripped the rabbit no more tightly than he did his toothbrush, or his dinner fork… Why was this time any different? He felt no difference—he held them no differently.

And yet, despite his lack of feeling, he could not help but wonder where his hands went wrong. Where _he_ went wrong—where along the line whatever deity decided to curse him with these goddamned hands. Hands that could not—well, could not do _something_ ; he was not sure what, but he knew he was different, somehow. He was _wrong_ , in some way. He saw the looks his parents sent him compared to those of his brother—they cast their eyes upon him with welling horror, repugnance not unlike how one may glare upon a weasel, or a rabid dog—like something not of this earth. Like something long since gone, some demon or ghost like those from his storybooks. Like a walking carcass.

Noiz glanced back down at the corpse lying doll-eyed at his feet.

He reeled back onto his bottom and vomited into the grass.

~w~w~w~

Something severed itself from Noiz’s soul that day.

His childish cheer diminished to a flat insouciance, the wonderment unraveled from his grasp. He would smile only at his brother, out of some leftover shrivel of hope that Mathias still harbored enough compassion—enough _love_ in his heart to allow his elder brother that much; Mathias received them but did not always reciprocate. It was plenty clear to the younger boy that Noiz was far removed from the uniformity expected by high society. It had taken time and mitigation to mend the bond broken between them by the death of their residential rabbit—even more so when they discovered three kits poking their trembling heads up to the surface of their nest beneath the bush.

Noiz’s parents insisted on taking them as pets, despite their eldest son’s reluctance. Mathias would take two—the third, the smallest in the trio, was forced into Noiz’s hands on the day he turned six.

He would name the kit “Kaninchen”—he cared little for the vermin and the vile memories that bounded to the forefront of his brain from the mere sight of her, and as such he put little thought into her naming. Despite himself, however, he would grow far more attached to her than he might have conceived.  Her general demeanor would have been difficult for most to endure—she was reserved and rowdy and quick to resist human contact; any attempts at handling resulted in scratched skin and bloodied fingers. Perhaps it was fate, then, that delivered the doe to Noiz’s unfeeling hands.

After being flung from physician to physician, Noiz would flee to his room, slam the door shut, and bury his face into the fluffed fallow fur of his rabbit familiar. She would struggle, she would scratch at his cheeks and scuff them up something awful, but he hardly cared. He took comfort in their bizarre relationship, however unhealthy it might have been, and when she died shortly after his eighth birthday, he sobbed fitfully for the first time in years.

The children at school would mock him for his sorrow, questioning him and quipping at his downtrodden mug. They were sick, he would think as his parents picked him up from class. They were the sick ones, not he. Those “children”—those _beasts_ —they were no more human than he. Like vultures they would pick at him, nibbling away at his soul until very little remained of the curious, uncorrupted child he once was; that which endured the scuffles and the seclusion was buried deep within. But they would never devour his entirety, of that he was certain—like the rabbit, he may find an enemy in most, but he had his nerves to his advantage. They may strike him, but bleed as he may, he would never be eradicated.

And he would fight them.

Noiz was indefinitely locked in his room not a week later.

~w~w~w~

In time, he would teach himself to better control his grip.

He practiced with whatever he could get ahold of in his bedroom—looseleaf paper, pieces of furniture, bits of brunch and dinner slipped beneath the door at regular intervals, at ten o’clock am and 7 o’ clock pm, respectively. There were times where his strength would fail him throughout the years, particularly in the beginning—he lost a number of apples to a clenching of fingers, and he oftentimes discovered the fresh fruiting of eggplant-purple clouds sprouting up on his palms from gripping the bedpost too tightly. In time, however, his boredom got the best of him in his isolation and he decided from then onward that he would at least make an attempt to “become human” as his father had once so forthrightly put it.

He made his escape one night, when he was fifteen or so, after his brother found the key to his bedroom and let him out while their parents were attending a dinner party in another district. Neither of them said much amidst this exchange, and when all was said and done, Mathias took the brunt of their parents’ punishment. They never did find Noiz, until his return to Germany many years later, and for this Noiz could never repay his sibling enough.

Keeping his family name probably wasn’t the brightest decision he ever made, but it stuck with him like a tick all the way to Midorijima. There was no shaking his reputation either—although his family was not generally known by the Japanese populace, anyone who happened to discover his wealth by a quick search on their coil could easy twist him to their bidding. He was trapped at the epicenter of bribes, threats, deals—and yet none of it ever had much of an effect on his state of being. Was he truly so far removed—so _detached_ from everything and everyone that he had become little more than a blip in the static of this world? He never let it get to him anymore—he was well aware of his isolation; it was no secret, and his parents had made that plenty clear throughout the years.

All the same, when he finally created his first allmate at age sixteen, a certain emptiness he was formerly unaware of began to brim—an emptiness that would spill over and flood his entirety three years later, on the day that Aoba Seragaki guided him out of the dark of his burrow.

~w~w~w~

“Noiz?”

The glare cast in Aoba’s direction is cue enough to silence the bluenet temporarily; with a tiny, guilty grin, he angles an admiring glance toward his younger partner from the doorway of the bedroom and leans his forearm against the frame. An apologetic glint glows brighter in his hazel gaze as he allows himself to linger a bit longer on Noiz’s body—his lover’s torso is entirely exposed (save the soft lilac quilt laid awkwardly across his middle) and a pair of simple ash sweatpants loosely hugs his hips, a bit too long and large for his body. The faint flickering of a fake candle illuminates his form just enough to outline his left side in a warm amber—a jade iris glows golden as it peers across the room at him.

“… It only took ten minutes this time.” The gentle lull in Noiz’s eyes signifies his exhaustion—it’s close to midnight. Only four days have passed, and far from easy have those four days been for the two of them. “How was the party?”

“A little boring, to be honest…” Aoba mumbles, folding his arms over his chest as he steps quietly across the carpet towards the younger man in the rocking chair. “Ten minutes? Really?”

“Yeah.”

A small pout sprouts upon Aoba’s lips. “It took me at least thirty this morning…” Shrugging his shoulders, the pout molds slowly into a mirthful grin as his gaze loiters longer on Noiz, then on the quilted bundle clutched close to his chest. The smile broadens still and soon lowers to rest on Noiz’s lips in a gentle kiss—it is chaste, lazy, and worth every waning second. When they separate, Aoba lifts his hand to rest atop his lover’s head and sifts his fingers idly through the choppy blond locks prodding at his palm. “Want anything to eat before I go to bed?”

With a gentle shake of the head, Noiz averts his eyes from Aoba as the bluenet retreats through the door and out of sight—his gaze falls leisurely back down to the form resting against his open palm as she begins to fuss and fidget in his hold. Noiz snorts lightly to himself, rocks the chair again, and moves a hand to softly shift the quilt more snugly around her middle; he lightly pats the blanket and swings forward and backward more insistently. He’s still being a bit rough, isn’t he? His heart rate escalates with each second that expires around him—her whines flourish into wails as he rises from the chair a bit too quickly for her liking. He hears Aoba’s voice calling him from the kitchen—he does not respond, however, in favor of holding her more securely in his quivering arms and retreating towards the back door. Despite his looming anxieties, he will not crush her—and he will not let her fall.

Hushing her with a gentle, quivering whisper, Noiz positions her carefully in the crook of his left arm and opens the back door with his right, steadily treading the slick stone of the patio with each wary step—a few of his Usagimodoki follow alongside him and try their best to stay quiet.

The child in his hold sniffles and sneezes once, and yet, despite her prior distress, ceases crying shortly after the cool rush of blustery winds flutter across her face; her silence prompts a placated sigh to slip out from Noiz’s parted, dried lips, and as her eyelids slide shut over a mantis-green gaze, he too finds freedom from his anxious state of mind. A feather-light sensation billows in a fresh breath beneath his ribs.

As he sways to and fro in an effort to ease her, a low rustling, quick and quiet, resonates from across the yard, and as he lifts his head to cast a glance at the fence, he spots the faintest flash of a taupe tail disappear through a hole at the bottom of a rotting post.

And he is, at long last, at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> And they lived happily ever after and, despite all odds, reproduced like rabbits. 
> 
> You can follow my writing blog on tumblr [here](http://quarrelswithquills.tumblr.com/).


End file.
